Future of Republicanism – Page 2 – Slugger O'Toole

A tentative answer to the question: “what does Fianna Fail stand for?”

Mick Fealty on March 24, 2015, 2:38 pm

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So miles away from the talk of pacts and sectarian games last Friday, East Galway Colm Keaveney, the former Irish Labour Party Chair who has been one of the few movers across to the Fianna Fail whip in the Dail, had an interesting grilling from NewsTalk’s Sean Moncrieff in Galway: It takes a while to get started but this section in particular caught caught my ear, not least because it has been one of the few lucid public attempts by …

Nation building in Ireland entails a job of stitching rather than an unstitching

Mick Fealty on March 6, 2015, 9:29 am

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Peter Geoghegan had a nice piece comparing and contrasting the constitutional tensions in a range of places across Europe in the Irish Times on Tuesday.. I recommend reading it all, but for our narrow purposes on Slugger, I’d extract this short piece: Ireland was once at the coalface of any prospective European boundary changes. During the cold war, the Border seemed the most likely to shift in Europe. But the post-Berlin Wall thaw coincided with a change in the Northern …

Does our future belong to strategic optimists or endlessly tactical ‘passive aggressionism’?

Mick Fealty on December 17, 2014, 10:35 am

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I was talking to a friend the other day about the latest online craze Candy Crush. His advice was pretty direct: never get involved with any game in which there is no finite end. The trick to Candy Crush, apparently, is that it lures you in at the low skill/easy entry end with a series of compelling short term tactical plays. At the same time the developers keep adding more and more layers at the farther, inaccessible side. This means that no matter how …

Who needs a Border Poll? – Five Potential Futures for NI

Cathal McGuigan on October 3, 2014, 9:53 am

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We’ve all seen the articles over the last while which offer an exhaustive picture of the political ramifications that an independent Scotland would have on Northern Ireland’s fate. Though interesting, when I read them I have this nagging feeling that the authors are being all too short sighted. Through the science of climatology we know that the earth’s crust is probably just a few harsh words away from crumbling to bits like so much wet cake. How can you even …

Why Sinn Fein would actually want to call a ‘friendly’ Border Poll now…

Mick Fealty on September 24, 2014, 10:19 pm

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listen to ‘@AlexKane221b and @chrisadonnelly discuss the possibility of a border poll following the Scottish referendum.’ on audioBoom This is from Good Morning Ulster with a great take from our own Chris Donnelly on Sinn Fein’s motives for calling a border poll the day after the Independence referendum result in Scotland was announced.. to keep the issue of a united Ireland at the centre of political discourse in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein fear a normalisation of politics at Stormont. with …

After IndyRef #3: Why Northern Ireland may be the very last bit to exit the United Kingdom…

Mick Fealty on September 23, 2014, 5:02 pm

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Alex Kane thinks it’s all over in Scotland for another generation. Well, maybe. The problem with that argument is that the political system may already be re-wiring itself in Scotland around the battle lines of the campaign and the result. Next time out the British Prime Minister may not be able to count Scottish Labour as a bulwark to keep the Scots and Picts from rebelling more completely next time. Britishness is in serious decline amongst those who came of …

Fianna Fáil, firmly embedded in the history of the Irish state, now need to articulate its future

Mick Fealty on September 18, 2014, 4:56 pm

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Oh yes, Irish Politics… This is worth noting in passing. Fianna Fail are suffering something of the same hangover that befuddled first the Tory party and latterly the British Labour Party. Being in power for so long that you lose your direction and purpose. Gary Murphy puts some bones on that in the Examiner.. Martin’s jibe that Fine Gael are too right-wing was not just some throwaway remark but had its roots in Fianna Fáil’s long history. Fianna Fáil always viewed …

#VinB takes some time to consider the question of a United Ireland…

Mick Fealty on July 28, 2014, 10:26 pm

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Normally I wouldn’t necessarily flag this up, but it is worth watching Vincent Browne programme on TV3 tonight. It starts at 23.15 BST) and amongst [planned] guests will be Sinn Fein’s Dublin MEP Lynne Boylan, Mark Cosgrove of the UUP, our own David McCann and chaired by journalist Justine McCarthy… I don’t think TV3 is available on broadcast in Northern Ireland, but you can pick it up worldwide online.. so we’ll ask the ‘Editor’ forgo his customarily juvenile ‘Partitionist!’ jibe…. …

Considering the Past: “Too comfortable a zone and we stop looking towards a ‘better’ future.”

Mick Fealty on July 28, 2014, 12:18 pm

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we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind is politics, and of a kind we will not like… – Lionel Trilling John Bruton has published an interesting apologia for John Redmond and his achievements in securing the Home Rule Bill in September 1914. Considerable brinksmanship was needed, because, if the Liberals lost the election, the cause of Home Rule would also be lost. Redmond and Dillon did not have all the trump cards. …

How might a Republican future unfold, who or what might shape it, and what can it achieve?

Mick Fealty on July 25, 2014, 10:21 am

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There’s a very good interview with Anthony McIntyre on Vice, not least because it provides rather more light than we normally get on the Boston College project. But one aspect relates to Anthony’s characteristic pessimism when it comes to the future of Irish Republicanism: To me, republicanism is over, but can I see a future for republicans if they behave in a rational manner and pursue justice and politics. Unfortunately, there are still people who think that political violence is …

Who stands for an Irishness that includes the British of Northern Ireland?

Mick Fealty on July 14, 2014, 4:47 pm

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Heard about the one about the Catholic priest who watched the Twelfth and thought it wasn’t Protestant enough? Here’s the News Letter reporting on Fr Martin Magill’s piece in the Irish News… “One of the Orangemen I met told me he had carried a Bible in previous years but didn’t this year because he was afraid it would get wet. For me, this was a parable of what is missing in the Twelfth — people living by the Word of …

Euro 14: Nationalist apathy rears its head.

David McCann on May 28, 2014, 7:30 pm

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Sinn Fein for the second time topped the poll in the European elections matching their success in the local elections; if you’re a nationalist you have probably popped the champagne corks and begun a rousing chorus of ‘happy days are here again.’ However, if you are of this view I sadly have to tell you to put that champagne back on ice and turn down the music. Nationalism as whole had a very poor election this time around as it …

Some thoughts on the Economics of Unity.

David McCann on April 24, 2014, 5:41 pm

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Within Republicanism I am definitely on what I call the Diana Ross wing of thinking which says ‘you can’t hurry love’ That is why I have consistently opposed Sinn Fein’s move for a border poll right now, as I have always thought Republicanism needs to move off the notion of territorial lines on a map and simply quoting events that happened a century ago. It has long been a criticism of Irish nationalism that we lack a coherent economic argument …

1916 Rising and how it inspired me 78 years later.

David McCann on April 20, 2014, 3:23 pm

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There are a lot of pieces going around today looking back at the Rising and its subsequent impact on the direction of Irish politics. But, I wanted to tell a different story of how the Rising inspired me and impacted on my future direction and beliefs. I don’t claim that this story is indicative of anything, other than my own political values, nor do I believe it is more valuable than other stories, which I hope commentators will share in …

Sinn Fein’s Demographic war for constitutional change is useless without middle class

Mick Fealty on April 7, 2014, 10:55 am

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Interesting take from Denis Bradley on Friday on the current impasse. In it, he accurately describes the model as I suspect SF see it: While an unreformed DUP occupy one of the corners in the boxing ring, Sinn Fein are in no danger of being removed as their opponent in the other corner. Our history and our divided loyalties have tied us into an incessant battle of numbers – the majority living in fear of becoming the minority and the …

Fianna Fail sets 2019 as a target date for running in NI elections

Mick Fealty on March 22, 2014, 7:08 am

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And so it seems that Fianna Fail is to put its money where its attention has been for some time: Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has confirmed his party’s intention to stand for election in Northern Ireland in 2019. “I’ve set that as a target to field candidates,” he said. The party passed a motion from Donegal North East and Dublin Bay South delegates without debate – it called for active and serious participating and engagement in the political process …

Gordon Brown’s tough to trump “have-your-cake-and-eat-it formula” for Scotland

Mick Fealty on March 12, 2014, 12:07 pm

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For my money I think Gavin Falconer underestimates the sheer pragmatic force of John Bew’s latest argument in favour of the union. One of my late uncles by marriage was one of the few people I’ve ever known who had been an enthusiastic member of the AOH (by contrast I know lots of Orangemen). I once asked him why the AOH had fallen on hard times. He answered quick as a flash, the 1947 Welfare Act. Up until then, he …

Is 2016 time to “write out our own clean birth certificate for the Irish Republic”?

Mick Fealty on December 16, 2013, 4:08 pm

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And for the third week in a row, here’s a piece from the Sunday Independent and Eoghan Harris who warns ill-prepared southern politicians from testing their ‘leaky consensus’ on the differences between the south’s military struggle for independence and the IRA’s recent (some would say, ongoing) long war… Adams would “win” any such debate for two reasons. Because of what I call a “leaky consensus” against the IRA’s actions. And because the border between the Old IRA and the Provo …

On Ireland’s strange romance with ‘Euronationalism’….

Mick Fealty on November 29, 2013, 2:58 pm

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Ever wondered why nearly all our Northern Ireland MEPs have been Eurosceptic (with the exception of the SDLP) whilst those in the south have been almost universally Europhile? John Coakley on the remarkably protean nature of Irish identity, and it’s willingness to engage with wider notions of European identity… It may well be the case that the pillars on which Irish nationalism has relied in the past – such as its ancestral language, a perceived link to the Catholic tradition, …

Seamus Mallon: “If we are going have integrity in Irish republicanism it has to be an organic thing…”

Mick Fealty on October 15, 2013, 5:13 pm

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Marian Finucane caught up with Seamus Mallon when he was in Dublin recently with David Trimble to pick up their honorary degrees from Dublin City University. She did not pussy foot around, and began by asking the SDLP’s former Deputy First Minister, what he thought [in his own words] ‘needs to be said’: Stop this interminable failure to deal with issues, to them put them on the long finger, to treat them as though they didn’t exist. To run your …